Nicole Ponsler

Reflection and Commentary

October 26, 2008

Packet #3

RESEARCH

I have been giving a great deal of consideration to producing art happenings or live painting performances since researching Mona Caron’s work. I have started painting in response to my partner’s weekly band practice. So far, I have painted effigies of Bush and Cheney during these meetings. My intention is to eventually create more abstract paintings and collages in response to the music. I have created a space within my studio that accommodates both the band, as well as several drawing areas where other band mates or friends are invited to create along with me. In addition, I have three scheduled performances this week. I will be presenting the effigies to townsfolk at a November 1^st gathering. Locals will be encouraged to write their thoughts about Bush and Cheney on the effigies before we set them on fire in the middle of Highway One. During the same event, I will be creating a live painting piece that addresses the upcoming election. During election night, I will be making a live painting at a friend’s art opening reception. Both pieces will be created in 2-3 hours and both will address in some way the affects of war/occupation. These performances also speak to my interest in the Herb Kohl quote that you offered:

"One can study physical environment. One can also create environments. Recently I worked with a group of youngsters who created a suburb out of cardboard tubes, string, and paper. As we developed the suburb we became the residents of our environment and acted out the lives of people we created. Using the simplest and cheapest materials one can create the world in the classroom. One can look at contemporary art, at the environments of [Edward] Kienholtz, Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, or study theater as a means of creating a simulated environment."1

I am interested in exploring art forms that are more applicable to audiences or that actually engage the audience in the act of art-making. The first night that the band played while I worked on Bush, people were so inspired. They were inspired by my space, the work on the walls and my dedication to my art practice. I find this enthusiasm to be contagious. They felt inspired by my work and I was feeling very motivated by their enthusiasm. If this same model could be presented to a larger audience or one that is less likely to participate in such activities, more people would be affected and/or inspired. I feel like we are standing on the precipice of a kind of cultural renaissance. To this end, I am interested in doing my part to encourage others to be a part of this shift in thinking, perception and motivation. I have also been thinking about these art happenings with regard to the following quote:

“Public art that is public mourning allows us to remain with loss, returning us again and again to a sense of human vulnerability and to our collective responsibility of the physical lives of others”2

I am endeavoring to make live paintings that speak to my own heartbreak and anger regarding the war in Iraq. I am considering making the first live art piece about an Iraqi family’s loss. I am consulting with my cousin who has now been back from two tours in Iraq for six months. I am hoping to either use one of his (many terrible) stories as a subject for narration and/or the testimony of a Winter Soldier. I know how this war has affected my family directly. I know that people, particularly in North America, have a difficult time truly processing horror and atrocity unless they themselves are directly impacted in some way. This theme has always been of interest to me. I find it unfathomable that people in this country often do not identify with the pain of others due to prejudices, ignorance, proximity or the simple inaccessibility of the horrors that continue daily as a result of our occupation of Iraq. I am interested in exploring further the impact that public art can have in making the abstract known and more personal. To this end, I am finding Judith Butler’s Precarious Life very interesting and enlightening, particularly the following passage:

“It is necessary to posit the “I” in unknowingness…Once the grief is made personal and identifiable, one can move past melancholia into the consideration and vulnerability of others”2

The more I think about this, the more I am inclined to say that this is a significant and crucial role for artists in a post-traumatic society. The audience that is reached through public art takes the message from museums and galleries and lays it at the feet of mainstream America. This “collective responsibility for others”2 as elicited through an understanding of universal human vulnerability relates to Shoshana Felman’s essay regarding the post-traumatic era in literature and the necessity for traumatic testimony as part of a larger educational pedagogy3. Felman’s suggestion that trauma be made more human through personal testimony in art, literature, music, dance, etc. encourages the audience to posit themselves in the event, thus allowing us to identify with human vulnerability. I think this is one of the biggest issues that we face as a nation that has become so far removed from others. We seem to have an empathy deficiency, perhaps due in part to the total lack of media representation relating to the horrors and atrocities of war. It’s a terrible thought, but we need the equivalent of a photo of a child fleeing a burning village covered in napalm in order to really inspire descent.

I have been researching mirror neurons and their relation to empathy. Mirror neurons are responsible for human’s ability to identify, register and empathize with the emotions or actions of others. Mirror neurons allow people to become so impassioned during a sporting event or a movie. To this end, if we were allowed to see pictures of the suffering Iraqi people, we as a society would be more likely to be outraged and demand the cessation of war and occupation. Similarly, if the accounts of our returning soldiers were presented through more mainstream media, we would be more likely to see the unspeakable damage that we are eliciting on those that we propose to support. I am reminded of the recent attacks on Georgia where cover photos in the New York Times recounted terrible, murderous scenes involving grieving families amidst their dead relatives. Yet, we seldom witness such identifiable carnage associated with Iraqi occupation.

The existence of mirror neurons suggests that humans are meant to be social and that we, in fact, take most developmental cues from the observation of others. The author Chuck Palahniuk talks about people’s need to “create structure and friendships through mutual interests”4. For Palahniuk, that means participating in writing circles. For others, that may mean establishing a quilting circle or volunteering for a pebblestone mosaic. For me, it’s graduate school and a small circle of friends who consider living an artful life among their priorities. These circles of connectivity speak to the group of volunteers who have been squirreling away stones to be used in the pebblestone mosaic for weeks now. I know that for myself, whenever there has been a particularly obvious or public display of volunteerism within our community, I have felt the need to give more of myself and my skills. It will be interesting to note the affects of such a public endeavor (in the middle of our town!) on others in the community. Similarly, I am anxiously awaiting audience responses from the live painting performances. I anticipate that the next packet will discuss these responses pertaining to audience as witness and the inclusion of the “I” as a testimonial response.

ARTWORK

The balloon and roses painting (working title: Tania, the Revolutionary) represents an image that I’ve had in my head for some time now. The image speaks to my relationship with my dad that came into being as a result of his funeral where white balloons were released. It seemed oddly celebratory to me that we were standing outside on a beautiful day with blue skies and 90 degree heat, releasing white balloons at the gravesite. As I let my balloon go I tried my best to let my animosity towards him go with it. We watched as all the balloons were carried away further and further until their tiny outlines resembled sperm. Nate wondered aloud what critter would subsequently choke on them once their migration came to an end-an appropriate metaphor for my father’s legacy, indeed.

The hands that are intended to ultimately stem from the thorny vines reflect my attempt to demonstrate a sense of not belonging, or otherness. This was also a theme of my trip home for the funeral, as I am adopted and my family never misses an opportunity to point out our dissimilarities. The hands will ultimately hold square pegs and seeds. The roses represent my unwavering love for all things Baroque. It is a symbol that I intend to continue throughout this semester’s work. For me, the roses symbolize beauty that has the possibility of being deceptively painful. I also like the idea of creating tension between the balloon and the adjacent thorns. The balloon will eventually have a reflection of me that will be partially covered in thorny vines. I think these vines will in some way outline the two ravens that are meant to be fighting over some nesting material. I do not know what’s going on with the sky just yet. I do know that the right side will contain many more roses than the left and that they will function to direct the viewer’s eye throughout the painting. Possible contemporary influences include, Fang Lijun, Haley Hasler, Barnaby Whitfield, Roberta Tewes (local painter) and Julie Heffernan. Historic references include Dutch still life artists.

The second pastel painting narrates my friend Fish Taco’s (yes, that is his name!) experience as a fighter pilot in WWII and the decades since spent trying to recover from the trauma he sustained as a young man. He was once relaying a story to me about his experience with Rolfing and how it manifested his complete transformation into a pterodactyl. He later learned that the teeth that had been painted on the side of fighter planes during the war had sparked this transformation. The landscape to the side and behind Fish Taco narrates an evening spent, much to his wife’s dismay, perched as a pterodactyl in a nearby forest of Bishop Pines. Influences include Barnaby Whitfield, Wei Dong and maybe a late Otto Dix.

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1 KOHL, HERBERT. The Open Classroom. 1969.

2 BUTLER, JUDITH. Precarious Life. Verso, 2004.

3 FELMAN, SHOSHANA. “Education and Crisis”. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. John Hopkins University Press, 1995.

4 PALAHNIUK, CHUCK. Stranger than Fiction: True Stories. 2008